


I Will Never Let You Down

by evieeden



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Clint Feels, F/M, POV Clint Barton, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, advent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8736094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieeden/pseuds/evieeden
Summary: Clint was determined not to let Wanda ever give up.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my second advent fic. Again I'm posting a little late, as my lack of sleep is causing 'falling asleep at random times' moments.  
> Anyway, this one is Wanda/Clint because I love their relationship and I think it was great to see more of it in Civil War.
> 
> Anyway, happy 2nd December (sort of) and I hope you enjoy reading this.

Clint sat quietly in the driver’s seat of the truck as they sped away from the false safety of the compound. In the passenger seat of the vehicle, Wanda fidgeted silently next to him, twisting her hands in her lap.

Finally he couldn’t stand it.

“All right. What was it?”

Her hands paused in their relentless movement and she quickly shoved them under her legs.

“I do not understand.”

She chanced a quick glance out of the corner of her eye at Clint and then resumed her steadfast gaze out the front window.

Clint sighed. He had never understood why Wanda and Natasha didn’t get on as well as he thought they should. They were both stubborn as hell when they put their minds to it, although maybe that was the point.

Although Wanda sending Natasha spiralling back into a Red Room flashback when they first met probably didn’t help either.

“What made you give up? Give in?”

This time he was somewhat pleased to note that Wanda’s look was more of a fierce glare.

“I did not give in to anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Clint snickered at her as he took a left that would lead them closer to the coast and the private airfield that he had arranged for Lang to arrive at. He had no idea what kind of skills the other man had, but it was enough that Steve had requested he meet the man and bring him to Germany once he had collected Wanda from the compound.

‘Collected’. That was how Cap had phrased it. Like he was picking her up from her other parents for visitation or something. He deliberately hadn’t mentioned anything about the fact that Wanda was a prisoner in all but name. Just said something about Vision watching her and that the android might not take kindly to her leaving given his stance on the Accords after Lagos.

Clint wasn’t as dumb as people thought he was. He could read between the lines.

Wanda wasn’t staying at the compound; she was trapped there with Tony Stark’s bastard pet as her jailer. And while Lagos was a shit-storm, it wasn’t anything as bad as the devastation meted out in the name of ‘good’ while he had been working with SHIELD.

It wasn’t about that though, not really.

It was never really about Lagos. Everyone knew it was easy to blame the good guys for the damage caused when the bad guys were too dead to face justice for their actions.

It was about fear.

Somewhere along the way, probably since even before they had been pushed together in some semblance of a working strike team, those in charge had feared the Avengers. They feared what they could do, the power they had, the money, in Stark’s case, and the fact that if any of them ever had a bad day, they could level cities, destabilize governments and destroy peace.

They chose to ignore the fact that each of them, in their own way and for their own reasons, had all come around to fighting on SHIELD’s side.

Instead the governments and other agencies chose to focus on the damage they could do, rather than the good. And there were those, like the current Secretary of State, fucking Ross, who craved the ability to wield the sort of power they held, without a single care for the individuals involved.

Even Steve, probably the most visible and trusted of all of them, – hell, the man even had his own exhibition at the Smithsonian – had become a figure of mistrust and uncertainty following his takedown of SHIELD and info-dump of all of Hydra’s secrets.

The governors and whatever were more angry that he had exposed all their dirty little secrets and hypocrisy, than they were that a fucking Nazi organisation had grown and infiltrated their highest levels. They didn’t like that their good, little soldier refused to obey all their orders blindly.

They didn’t like that he was actually just… good.

And if Captain America wasn’t trusted to act in the world’s best interests then the rest of them had done enough morally questionable things to give them no chance.

Wanda was just more vulnerable than the rest of them at the moment. She was the most powerful of them by and with a little training, she would become even more skilled and deadly, but she had also refused to sign the Accords, hesitant to place her actions in the hands of those who could abuse it.

She was a made thing; Hydra had taken an angry and grieving little girl and twisted her emotions for their own benefit. Manipulated.

Yes, Clint knew exactly why she had refused to sign, just as he knew it was the exact same reason that had made Natasha sign.

A powerful girl like Wanda though…they would come for her. They wouldn’t be able to bear not having control of her.

In a way, that was the one disadvantage to having to leave Vision behind in the compound. He would have been handy in a fight, more than capable of taking care of both himself and Wanda, where half the time Clint could barely look after himself.

But there was something…

The way Wanda had looked when he had grabbed her hand and started towing her towards the exit. The fear in her eyes that hadn’t been there before…

There was making a mistake and acknowledging it and trying to hide away from the darkness that everyone else saw in you.

“At the compound.” Clint spoke slowly, knowing that Wanda was listening intently, even if she was pretending not to. “You hesitated when we were leaving. Said you didn’t want to cause any more trouble.”

“So?” Her voice was cold. In anyone else it would have shut down the conversation, but Clint hadn’t got to where he was by being a wilting flower.

“So… who told you that you were causing trouble?”

“No-one,” she immediately denied. “But if I hadn’t burned the hospital in Lagos, then this wouldn’t be happening.”

“This?” He prompted. “The Accords?”

She shrugged, which he took as an acknowledgement that he was right.

“Wanda.” He paused and rubbed his hand over his face. On the one hand, Lagos was awful and while not directly responsible for the bomb, he knew that Wanda didn’t see it that way. But on the other hand, he couldn’t allow her to carry on believing that the whole thing was her fault. “Wanda, the Accords were going to happen whether Lagos had happened or not. Ross and his cronies were just itching to impose some kind of control on enhanceds and after the whole Hydra thing in DC, so were the rest of the government. It’s what happens when people are afraid - ”

“Afraid of me,” she interrupted him.

The certainty in her voice made his pause. Everything became clear.

Without warning, he yanked the wheel of the van sideways, pulling over onto the verge and killing the engine. He spun in his seat and grabbed Wanda’s hands.

“It that it? Is that what they told you to make you stay in the compound? That people were afraid of you?”

Her eyes skittered away. Clint grabbed her thin, ring-covered hands, gripping them in his own.

“Wanda!”

She forced her eyes to meet his, but he could see she was one second away from curling up in on herself.

“Did they tell you to stay at the compound because everyone was afraid of you?” he pressed.

“No,” she shot back, but then her voice got quieter. “Not exactly.”

He stared at her.

“Vision just said that it couldn’t be helped. That my powers… It was an involuntary reaction.” Wanda shook her head. “Something to do with the way the brain works.”

It all came together in his head. “So that’s what that whole ‘if you do this, they will always be afraid of you’ thing was.” He rubbed his neck, still able to feel the unyielding power of Vision’s arm around his neck.

The robot ran off logic, Clint understood that, but people weren’t logical so there was no point trying to analyse them all from that point of view.

Wanda shuffled in her seat. “He was right. They are afraid of me.”

“And that’s their problem,” he replied. “Wanda…” Clint sighed, suddenly feeling every year of his age. “You can’t live your life based on what other people think, based on what they fear or don’t fear. You’ll go crazy and end up doing nothing, when you could be doing so much.”

A small smile curved the corner of her mouth.

“That sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

He shrugged and ran his thumbs over the back of her hands. “People weren’t so kind when I was first brought in. It was the same with Nat. Never mind that we’re trying to do good, to protect them, to keep the world safer. We have power. They don’t. So they fear us and try to control us, because they know that we have the ability to bring them down.”

Wanda appeared to shrink in on herself. “I never wanted them to be afraid though. I only wanted to be strong enough to protect my people and destroy…”

She blushed. Clint gave a dry chuckle.

“Yeah, we all know you would have loved to take Stark down after what he did, but you changed your mind, you worked with him, because you wanted to help, to do the right thing, more.”

“But instead I did the wrong thing,” she said in a small voice.

Uncaring of physical boundaries – something Nat always said was his biggest flaw – Clint reached out and grabbed Wanda into a hug. “You did the right thing, but sometimes even doing the right thing can put people in harm’s way. It’s not your fault. It’s the fault of Rumlow and all of those jackasses who wanted to sell chemical weapons that would have hurt even more people. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not your fault.”

She hesitated and then hugged him back, burying her face in his neck.

“But now they’re afraid of me.” Her shaky, small voice reminded Clint of just how young she really was. He was surrounded by so many old souls with young faces that occasionally he misjudged her.

“Am I afraid of you?”

She laughed. “No. But then Natasha says you don’t have the common sense you were born with.”

“That’s probably true.”

He drew back from her and they both settled into their seats again. He was happy to see that Wanda almost looked back to her old self again.

“But I was right about her. And I was right about you and your brother, wasn’t I?”

He started the engine again and under the roar of the truck, he barely heard her reply.

“Were you?”

He answered her as if she had meant the words for him to hear. “Words mean nothing in this life, Wanda. Any idiot can spout off about how good they are and how much they help. Getting up and actually doing something, standing up for what you believe in, admitting you’ve made a mistake and then sorting it out… that’s what counts with me. It’s what counts with Cap and Sam. It’s even what counts with Tony, Nat and Vision if they weren’t so busy playing the political game.”

Clint steered the van back onto the road again. Contrary to what people thought, he knew when to shut up and let people have space to think. Wanda folded her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around herself, staring out the window.

She didn’t break the silence until they were pulling into the airfield and parking, the plane in sight in the near distance.

“I want to help. It’s my job.”

Clint hid his smile. “Then let’s get to it. I got your back.”

She shot him a sideways look. “Because my brother asked you to?”

“Hell no.” He grinned at her. “Because I’m afraid and I want you to protect me.”

She laughed then, pure and unforced. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

“Damn straight, you will.”

\----------

He struggled to keep the smile off his face later that day when she told Cap that it was time for her to get off her ass and fight.


End file.
